If you blink, you might just miss Adam Baxter’s newest album.
Long (Love) Story Short is a collection of ten songs created as a gift to Baxter’s wife. The album clocks in at just under seven minutes, with the longest track a mere 43 seconds long. The songs are snapshots into Baxter’s marriage, fleeting moments that he lets us be privy to for only short moments at a time.
Despite the album’s brevity, nothing feels ambiguous. Specific word choice becomes a powerful tool in Baxter’s arsenal. Even though we barely have a moment to settle ourselves into the scene he’s painting, he still manages to powerfully load details into such small amounts of time. “Star Dance”, for example, is filled with beautiful imagery of the universe and sunlight-drenched mornings. “I Hate Flying” focuses instead on smaller, more subtle details, a specific moment in time.
While trimming down these songs was a challenge Baxter enjoyed tackling, it was a challenge all the same.
“I found it difficult to express the sentiment of a longer song in such a short time span,” says Baxter. “Even though the songs are short, there’s a lot of material to them. The ideas just may not be as developed as they normally would.”
The bite-sized nature can be frustrating, in that sense. When it feels as though Baxter has just found his momentum with a track, he’s suddenly on to the next one. It doesn’t feel obstructively abrupt, and lyrically, he does do a good job of squeezing as much meaning out of a sentiment as possible. Still, at a surface glance, it’s hard not to be left wanting more.
With such little room for fluff, Baxter had to take extra care in refining songs to ensure he was able to properly convey his message. “Old Photos”, the opening track, is one of the ones that Baxter found himself fine-tuning the most. It’s about finding old photos and grappling with the reality of change – a tall order for 32 seconds.
“It made me realize how difficult change can be in life,” says Baxter. “Ageing, losing connections with people, routine, etc. I often try to convince myself that I haven’t changed at all, though I have. Packing all that into a short song was a fun project to undertake.”
One might assume that society’s collectively short attention span could contribute to the evolution of albums of this type. While the thought did cross Baxter’s mind during the recording process, his focus remained mostly on just how enjoyable putting this album together was.
“I’m really proud of this album. I love the songs and how they turned out after the recording process. It’s an entire album in the span of a Rush song! I can’t wait to get to play the whole thing live!”